A Person Emergency Response System (PERS) enables an elderly person or other person at elevated risk of incapacitating medical emergency to summon help. For example, a PERS may be activated by a person experiencing a debilitating fall, a heart attack, an acute asthma attack or other respiratory emergency, and so forth. The PERS typically includes a call button in the form of a necklace-worn pendant, a bracelet, or the like. By pressing the call button, a speakerphone console in the residence is activated, by which the at-risk person is placed into telephonic contact with a PERS call center operator. The PERS operator speaks with the calling person (hereinafter referred to as a PERS “subscriber” as the person subscribes with the PERS service, although any associated costs or fees may be paid by a medical insurance company or other third party), and takes appropriate action such as talking the subscriber through an asthma episode, summoning emergency medical service (EMS), dispatching a local PERS agent, neighbor, or other authorized person to check on the subscriber, or so forth. In providing assistance, the PERS operator has access to a subscriber profile stored on a PERS server, which provides information such as (by way of illustration) name, location, demographic information, a list of the person's known chronic conditions, a list of the person's medications, an identification of the nearest hospital, a list of emergency contacts (spouse, relative, friend), physician information, and so forth.
The PERS architecture typically assumes a homebound subscriber (where “home” may be an individual residence, a group residence, an apartment, an assisted care facility, or so forth). The assumption of a homebound subscriber enables use of lean PERS architecture. For example, in one PERS architecture, the call button is a low-power, short-range radio transmitter (e.g. operating at 900 MHz in some PERS) and the residential speakerphone console is connected to a telephone landline. Pressing the call button generates a radio signal that triggers the speakerphone console to connect with the call center. In this design, the call button is a simple device operating at very low power, and most of the system complexity at the residence end is built into the speakerphone console.
A disadvantage of this PERS architecture is that the PERS is only usable when the subscriber is in his or her residence.
The following discloses a new and improved systems and methods that address the above referenced issues, and others.